Rewrite the Stars
by HanRic82
Summary: If a curse separated you from your one true love, would you rewrite the stars to get back to them? CuriousArcher


AN: Hi all, long time no stories. To everyone who read and commented on 'Hello darkness my old friend', I'm so sorry that I never finished it. The truth, is simply that I lost my love of OUAT. I didn't like the route it was taking and I felt that it had lost its magic. It kind of killed my muse. However, after refusing to watch a single episode of season 6, my friends finally convinced me to watch season 7 and the reboot, and well, what can I say? Everthing I used to love about our show has returned…with a couple of great new characters too. The muse has spoken people, and Robin and Tilly who are played so magnificently by Tiera and Rose, were just crying out for a story of their own. I'm not sure where this is going yet, or even if it's going anywhere, so if you like it, please let me know where you'd like it to go. As always, it's unbeated, so forgive any minor mistakes. Also, I may have borrowed a few quotes from Lewis Carroll in the first chapter, those clearly aren't mine. Neither are the characters or the setting, I'm simply playing with them for a while. I hope you enjoy it.

I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then. It's something I've learnt to live with. The haziness, the fog, the not knowing, but it's confusing all the same. The doctor who gave me my pills said I was ill. Split-personality disorder, he called it. And the people on the street, the people who point and sneer and laugh, they call me mad. 'Crazy, Tilly'.

But I'm not mad. At least I don't think I am. It's just that sometimes I wake up and it's like a completely different world. Like I've fallen down a rabbit hole and nothing's as it seems. Nothing here feels right, it doesn't fit, and what appears real isn't and what isn't, is. I know I don't make any sense. I get why kids cross the street when they see me blocking their path but it's not my fault that I see the veil between realms. That a smelly underpass can suddenly become a vast forest. That a skyscraper can turn into an impenetrable tower, or that my stone friend can appear as real as you or I.

I know no one believes me. Not Weaver or Rogers, or the identical twins I sometimes see in my favourite bookstore. But just because they don't believe me, it doesn't make it any less true. Sometimes, when I look at Weaver, I think of a spinning wheel and mountains of gold. I smell the sea when I get close to Rogers, the salty air and wet sand. And sometimes, when I sleep, I see a girl. A beautiful girl with a gorgeous smile and a quiver full of arrows. But those visions, they feel like yesterday, and I know I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.

It's hard, having two versions of me living in one head. But at the same time, I'm grateful for the other me – the real me – because she won't let me forget. When she talks, it all makes sense. It's like she can see the truth between the lies. She sees through the masks she says we all wear. She sees the evil patterns in the way we were all scattered and purposefully kept apart. She convinces me to sleep with one eye open and to trust no one. But her wise words don't fit in here and when I can't understand them, I start to question them. And then I start to question me.

They told me I shot Weaver, once, and now they're telling me I might have killed some women. But I don't remember. I can't remember. Whatever happened, whatever I saw, that was the other me, the fake me, or maybe it was the real me and I'm just confused again. It gets so jumbled inside my head that I don't know which is up and which is down, or which world I'm supposed to be living in. I often think it'd help if I could just get them to understand, to see the world the way that I see it, but they never do. Instead, they give me pitying looks and tell me to go home, never once stopping to realise that I don't have a home to go too. Sometimes they try to tell me to take my pills, or even trick me into taking them, and though that's when I feel my most unstable, it's also when I gain the most clarity. I've never trusted a bottle that carries instructions on how and when to use it. I mean, if you found a mushroom that said 'eat me', would you, just because it sounded inviting?

They think the pills clear my head but they don't. When I stop taking them I can see the world through a looking glass. Everything is closer and clearer, and I can see the bigger picture. But it's always only temporary. The pills fog the lens and make it impossible to see. They blind me. They trick me into making me believe that the biggest puzzle is simply figuring out who I am.

Have you ever walked down a street and seen something familiar in everyone you past? Have you ever looked at a stranger and felt like you knew them but couldn't remember how? Have you ever read a book or watched a film and experienced the strongest sense of déjà vu? No? Because that's me, every day. It's like walking through life with a brain that's asleep. The world is a dream to me, a wonderland of unexplainable coincidences and almost memories, and I have no idea how to wake my mind from slumber. Sometimes I think I'm close, but then something happens to make me think that this world was the right one all along. Other times, I think that I'm simply missing something, something important that can glue together all my broken parts…

Maybe I really am, just mad, after all.

Xxxxxxxxxxx

" _Where should I go?"_

" _That depends on where you want to end up!"_

That's my favourite quote from my favourite book. Advice so beautiful in its simplicity that it opens the world to infinite possibility. I've always been restless. Ever since I was a child I've had this energy, this drive to do something – to be something – more.

Roni, this cool friend of my mom's, called it wanderlust. She said that some people were born to adventure, to travel, that not everyone was destined for a classroom and a career. I like that idea, that you can make a difference without being tied to the daily constraints of the rat race. Of course, my mother disagreed. Not that I'd ever expect anything less from the wicked witch. That was my childhood nickname for her and though it's a bit cruel in retrospect, she brought it on herself. She was always so overprotective of me. I was never allowed to skip school for a day with my friends. I was never allowed to climb trees or go swimming in the old quarry - even though I did them anyway - but that's not the point. Roni was like my cool aunt, someone who saw the world the same way I did. Someone I always imagined would have got on well with my dad.

I never met my father but I heard he was an adventurer too. He loved the great outdoors, camping and climbing and white-water rafting. He was an expert in survival and at one with the trees, which makes it slightly poetic that he was killed during a hunting trip. Sometimes, when my mother's driving me mad, I like to imagine what life would have been like if I'd grown up with him instead. I think I'd have liked seeing the world through his eyes.

I feel my phone vibrate and glance down to see yet another message from my mom. Is that thirty-six, now? Why is she so insistent all of a sudden? Fourteen months on the road with nothing more than a brief, weekly 'are you alive?' and now thirty-six calls and messages in forty-eight hours. I ignore the alert, more than aware that there'll be plenty of time for lectures when I finally get off this godforsaken bus.

"Heading home?"

Startled, I glance to my left and to the elderly lady sat in the seat opposite. She seems friendly enough, so I return her smile with one of my own, "Seattle, isn't home."

"It doesn't look like anywhere is," she replies, her voice that condescending tone that older people always use when trying to mask judgement behind interest. "Have you been travelling?"

I nod, not really wanting to start a conversation with a woman who's probably never even left the state. Unfortunately, she doesn't take the hint.

"Where have you been?"

My gaze drifts to the many bracelets tied to my arm and my smile widens. "Peru, Brazil, Argentina, China, Thailand, Indonesia…"

"Goodness, that's a lot of places."

"I wanted to do more. I wanted to do Europe, especially England because my parents were born there…" My voice trails off when my phone vibrates again and I roll my eyes, yanking it from my pocket to stare at the screen with disgust. Make that thirty-seven messages!

"Let me guess," the old lady replies, inclining her head knowingly towards the offending phone, "your mom asked you to come back?"

I nod again and glance down to the screen, resenting the fact that she always seems to be the one to get in the way of my plans. Despite appearances I don't hate her, not even close, we just have such different, opposing views of the world. Mom see's it as dangerous and deceiving, a place where everybody you meet wants something in return. I see it as a canvass of untold stories, one that I'm secretly hoping will lead me to mine.

I sigh heavily and place the phone in my pocket, feeling guilty for not taking her news more seriously. If nothing else, her insistence proves that something's changed, so maybe I should be more open to the possibility of it being her, after all.

"I think she has something to tell me, "I announce, uncertain why I'm suddenly willing to open up to this stranger. "She's moved cities, walked out on her fiancée, it's really not like her…"

"Maybe she just misses you?"

I snort, remembering how grateful we'd both been at the thought of some time, apart, "I doubt it."

Silence falls between us as I glance out the window, watching as the dark countryside is slowly swallowed by the bright lights of the city. My mom and I are both nothing if not stubborn. We argue over everything and anything, and always for the wrong reasons. For a long time, I thought it was because she regretted having me. I know that she never wanted to get pregnant. She was young and reckless, and my father was a charmer. For so long, I thought she blamed me for the way her life turned out, for clipping her wings. So, I pushed back twice as hard. But a year on the road has taught me a lot. Yes, mom did sacrifice a lot for me, but she also achieved a lot to. She's independent, owns her own business, she's even getting married. She's happy, complete, so content with her life that she's finally ready to settle down.

I, on the other hand, am incomplete. I know there's something missing but I don't what it is. I spin through life without any real meaning or direction. I search countries and cultures for something that will define me yet constantly come up blank. I'm lost, cast adrift, determined to walk every road until I finally find the one that will lead me home.

"What are you reading?"

I'm so lost in my thoughts that I didn't even realise I'd picked my book back up. I glance down at it's cover, my fingers tracing the drawing of a girl in a blue dress. "Alice in Wonderland," I reply, "it's my favourite."

"It's a good book," the old lady agrees, observing me astutely as I begin to gather my things together. "Is this your stop?"

"The one after I think, I'm looking for a neighbourhood called, Hyperion Heights?"

"Ah, it's undergoing regeneration. Belfrey Developments have taken over and are building all sorts of new properties there. They say it's the up and coming place to be." I nod, only half listening as I pack my water and a packet of half-eaten Oreo's into my backpack. "Is that where your mom, is?"

Pausing, I think back to the thirty-seven messages and the one that instructed me to a specific street. "Yeah, though for me it's just another dead end."

The bus finally pulls into my stop and I stand, heaving my backpack onto my shoulder before grabbing my book of my seat. With a friendly, farewell smile, I turn to make my way to the exit but the old lady stops me before I go.

"I know this isn't Tibet or Mongolia, and I know a free spirit like you doesn't want to be hampered by her mother but do me a favour, don't leave this bus with such a negative view." Eyes far older and wiser than I'd given credit for, glance down to the book nestled lovingly in my arms, "If you don't know where you're going, then any road can get you there."

With her profound words echoing through my ears, I leave her with my first genuine smile as I jump from the bus into the cold Seattle air. My first impression of Hyperion Heights is that not much has changed. There's a few new buildings sure, but rundown shops covered with abusive graffiti are still the norm. As the bus pulls from its stop taking my worldly new friend with it, the glass windows and carpeted chairs are replaced with a familiar statute of a troll, and the woman who's apparently talking to it.

I don't know what it is that pulls one person to another but in that moment, I recognise something in the crazy blonde. She's lost, alone, searching…just like me. And though Roni's is in the opposite direction, my feet automatically take me towards her. Clutching my book tightly to my chest, I suddenly feel nervous, as if my entire reason for existing rests on the outcome of the next few minutes. I open my mouth to say something – what, I don't yet know - but before I can utter a single word, she darts across the road and right into the path of on oncoming car…


End file.
